A blog about genealogy and thoughts about the various roots and branches of my family tree as well as the times in which my ancestors lived.Included are the West, White,and McFarland families.WARNING:DO NOT TAKE ALL OF MY FAMILY RECORDS AS GOSPEL. ALWAYS CONFIRM YOUR OWN RESEARCH!

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Friday, October 10, 2008

THE FAMILY BIBLE

Besides the West Family Bible that my Aunt Dorothy gave me on theroad trip my sister Cheryl and I took this past August, I have two otherbibles here in my apartment. Both of them are at least forty years old.One is the bible I bought as a student at Cathedral High School inBoston. Once a week we assembled for Bible Study.

The other is an older, larger bible that sat for years on top of my parent'sdresser in their bedroom. I'm not sure if it was originally my mothers orif it had belonged to her mother, my grandmother Agnes McFarland. Ithas a tattered leather cover and it looks like one or more of us kids got toit at some point or another. There are two torn pages in Numbers. Somebodyused a hole puncher on the pages of the introduction. And there's somescribbling on the blank pages before the title page.

I was looking at it just now to see if Mom or my grandmother had used theFamily Record pages but found they were blank. And now this raises the questionfor me of whether I should fill in the births, marriages and deaths?

Should I just list our immediate family, or should I include the earlier generationsbefore Mom and Dad?

Even more important, should I inflict my truly horrible handwriting on futuregenerations of the family?

nIf you want to include people further back than your mum & dad, as long as you sign & date your writing, with a 'disclaimer', you'd be all right. Of course, if there was room you could add all your citations!(And your handwriting may give someone an interesting puzzle or two someday.)